Numen was part of a really interesting atari event year. The scene seems to be reborn when numen was shown at Lato Ludzików. Numen consequential uses modern techniques and almost every known xl/xe potential. Probably this nice piece of software is the only proof for the real power of atari xl/xe, wich was always known to be a computer which was not as good as the c64. I know this computer now for about 20 years. And almost every 8bit fan would say, that there were only a few titles on this platform which were really superb (mostly when xl/xe was the primary target to be developed).

Today, people know much more about the hardware and the real stength, which is provided by atari even in the year 1978 (as the xl/xe models were up to 90% the same hardware as the old 400/800 hardware). As a non-coder I hope, that this title will just be the start of upcoming demos in near future. Then the XL/XE platform will be on a position where it should be all the time before: somewhere between C64 and Amiga.

When I saw my first demo ever in late 1988 (Revenge of Magnus) I was amazed by the efx included in. After a couple of years I was blown away by WFMH's The Top series. Later I was surised by some Shadows, Slight, Tqa prods, but when In 2oo3 I saw Numen.... Do not know what to say. For sure I will NOT say "it is the best demo ever" cause a human (and machine) potential probably will bring in the future to the light a new demo (I hope so), which will once again made us dizzy. I wonder if this demo was written (enteriely?) on PC so is that why it was possible to achieve such astonishing results? But what really counts are the final effects of the demo and those are the most impressive I have ever seen on small Atari (well, mirror scroll in RoM still rules!=). Brievly, my hat off my head dudes.

you guys must be crazy!
absolutely amazing, though would have been nicer if you hadn't used the wolfenstein-part that often and that long... it rocks technically-wise, but gets boring (the wolfenstein-part)
apart from that, it's just pure magic (better say antic magic ;)

Very very good, abused a bit of table-tunnels but anyways the bumpmaps were really well done and towards the end there were some high-res vectors which I'm sure were not exactly easy to do ;) And the jisawed tunel just ruled :))))

Highly inspirational!! Very schizophrenic, especially the FPRPG scenes which gives it CDCability... and the soundtrack... and all that hardcore math things running... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! !!!!!1111hundredandeleven

Today, people know much more about the hardware and the real stength, which is provided by atari even in the year 1978 (as the xl/xe models were up to 90% the same hardware as the old 400/800 hardware). As a non-coder I hope, that this title will just be the start of upcoming demos in near future. Then the XL/XE platform will be on a position where it should be all the time before: somewhere between C64 and Amiga.

Hmm.. don't forget that this demo requires a (for the age of the machine) massive RAM upgrade. I'd be intrested to know how much of this demo an unexpanded 64k atari 8 bit machine could do, and how much a C64 could do with a similar amount of RAM. (i'm presuming here that the atari ram expansions are not like the C64 REU ones, which are more like RAM disk than actual RAM).

xeron: i'm not uptodate with specs of "C64 REU" expansions... but what i can tell you is that atari8 uses a fairly simple bankswitching method to address more than 64k RAM.

also, i guess it's useful to note that memory expansions have been commonplace in the atari8 scene for a very, very long time now. atari itself released a 128k XE (the 130XE), other vendors sold 256k and larger expansions in the early 80's already.

as for comparing c64 and atari8... well it should be obvious to anyone who can read that the atari8 has better specifications than c64 in almost all aspects. it's a lot like comparing amiga and atari st... but with reversed roles for the companies involved ;)

Spreading lies about Atari XL/XE sucks too! I'm also getting tired of that discussion about RAM expansions on the 8bit atari, esp. when c64 folks come into this discussion. the 8bit atari was designed for highest flexibility on RAM expansion right from the beginning in the late 70s. this is no hack and/or some kind of illegal way of "pimp my machine". every single NUMEN effect could be realized with a plain 64KB machine. but the demo makers preferred to load first all the code into memory and let it running without interruptions and waiting times for disk I/O.

to use your words:
I'd be interested to know how much of this demo a C64 could do, and how much an 64KB 8bit Atari could do, when it only would have the ability to load from disk while the music is playing and let the floppy cpu calculate in parallel.

The demo is nice, but it's really a shame I can't run it on my Atari 800XL. And the point with the 320kB RAM-expansion is that you're not running this demo on a "basic" machine, but an expanded one, no matter how many users have that particular expansion (a bit like the sidcard on the plus4).

I'd be much more impressed by the demo if it actually ran on my machine. Hell, I wouldn't mind if it required an 130XE =)

i'm also against using non-standard hardware. nowadays, on aga amiga, atari8, msx and even sometimes on falcon it's the normal way to do things.

eru once said in an interview that this demo could have been done on 64KB but the design would be a problem. this is what twh talks about: the loading times. i guess i still prefer it the 320 KB way, even if, i will never see it on my own 800 XL indeed..

I don't really get the point of all the discussion about ram usage, but ok . here we go. i just compiled and bundled every single effect used in the numen demo including the vector game engine which you can run on every 8bit Atari XL/XE. download link here:

http://twh.homelinux.org/numen_800xl.zip

Like I said. Not a single effect needs an upgraded Atari by itself. I even think that it wouldn't be a big deal to create a 64KB version which however must interrupt music and loads the next part from disk. if one is interested he could do this his own using the freely available numen sources at http://numen.scene.pl/ .

at desert dream most of our effects run about 20-30% slower because we trade that speed for loading. This is the point against using 320kb ram. you dont need to load and compensate for that like we do. You just throw part after part on the screens.

a c64 can do all of this (but slower) since its the same cpu (but slower) and you said all routines can run in 64kb.

It has always annoyed me to death that I own three different A8 computers but cannot watch any demos after 1995. A demo should work on the standard hardware, and sorry: Standard is NOT what a few members of the demo scene have. On C64 any gamer can take his 1983 C64 from the basement and start watching demos, or anyone can buy any C64 from eBay and do it. But on A8 this is not possible. The scene cripples itself down to the core scene members by requiring wild hacked hardware addons. And no, desoldering of the original DRAMs, ordering some weirdo homebrew RAM expansion from poland and soldering it into your computer is not "highest flexibility on RAM expansion right from the beginning". On C64 you simply plug your original Commodore RAM expansion to the expansion port and have your +128, +256 or +512k.

The music needs it, and the "demo flow". That's actually two very important things in a demo. Easily as important as the effects themselves.
I know that loading with music is quite troublesome for the coder and the guy who's doing the music since only 2 channels are useable during loading, but that is the restriction of the A8 and you have to live with it. At the moment it's more like "we don't actually like the original A8 hardware, so we modify it until we like it".

twh wrote: "I'd be interested to know how much of this demo a C64 could do"

Like Oswald said: Everything but slower. This demo is an A8 demo, don't expect it to work as good on C64. This is also the reason why nobody has ported it to C64 yet. It would only show the weaknesses of the C64 and none of it's strengths, and the people at AtariAge most certainly would use the port to bash the C64 :D . There's also a number of C64 demos which wouldn't port good to A8 :)

Anyway, apart from this discussion still thumb up for the demo itself.

And Oswald - c64 colors DO SUCK. And they DO look like puke. Every human draw on C64 looks like dead. For quite a long time.
Regardless of fact your head will explode while reading some true. Even if it harsh.

So what. New-Skool-Demos need the latest graphics card to run smoothly and old-skool demos needs RAM expansion. If ATARI 8-Bit needs a special 64k department, because it can do more, it speaks for the system.

well... ;) i my fault...i just tried some of the FX and they show not all gfx on 64k machines...on 128k machines some more fx run... so it seems not 100% true that the fx can be run on 64k machines... (without a rewrite). ;)

@Oswald
The C64 "ripoffs" in the G2F Gallery are done because of their "historical" meaning.
The modern pictures (FLI and else) are not worthy to "rip" , because they are more than "off" ;-) by the used colours and style.

Amazing 3D engine, which seems to have been used to its full extent here - the camera paths and the scenery are very cleverly done and it is by no means a simple fly-through. The sprites are especially cool. Nice music too.